As far as picture books go, Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times, A Visual Biography of the Ultimate Band is a bit sad. Not pathetic or anything like that, but sad in the nostalgic sense, in the way you miss…

Driving around Southern California these past weeks seems like a drive through a movie set with plumes of rising smoke, detours away from flames and messages from friends and family frantically gathering their belongings to eva...

The reasons for the breakdown of the family unit are always a hotbed of venomous debate. The culprits are often feminists, gays, greed, violence on TV or rock music that has a secret Satan voice whispering in the chorus (person...

Growing up, I never got the cheesy, seemingly plotless Elvis musical, having never been exposed to musicals. It wasn’t until a lusty late night tryst with Ewan McGregor dealing with a breaking heart in Moulin Rouge that I...

When most people hear the term “heavy metal,” they think of hard rockin‘, guitar-laden anthems screamed by big-haired dudes dressed in women’s clothes. Or is that just me? Heavy metal can also be a power...

When Myspace and Facebook first launched, personal profiles were for the most part open to the public. Over the years, after sorting out many messy controversies, the social network sites have increased security or at least mad...

At first glance The Full Monty may seem like an impossible choice for a family-friendly dinner theater to produce, but the Candlelight Pavilion has brought it to Claremont: unedited, raw and real. A risqué and risky show...

Fish have always been more interesting as symbols—or meals—rather than as actual creatures. Yes, they can come in striking colors and abstract shapes that give us visual pleasure, and we can certainly bond with the ...

It’s hard to watch a production of Much Ado About Nothing without thinking back to the joy and playfulness Kenneth Branagh evoked in his masterful 1993 adaptation of the same title. It’s harder even, given the moder...

Sometimes regarded as unsightly damage or unwanted, cast aside and misunderstood, graffiti has slowly gained recognition as an art form. From internationally known artists like Banksy to underground locals like those displayed ...

Unlike two-dimensional art, installation art often allows the viewer to actually enter the piece—walk around it, survey its angles and depth and sometimes physically merge oneself directly into it. While this characterist...

Sea turtles always seem to revisit their birth place to hatch their eggs. Penguins travel miles to the same area to have their young. While humans may not always return home to have families, there are a select few who…

I can’t remember the first time I picked up a camera, but I do remember the first Polaroid I emptied and the first time I opened the back of my dad’s old point-and-shoot, exposing the film of our family’s trip...

Walking down a dark stairway at night never made so much sense until the recent opening of Matthew Montecino’s “Reality Strikes Back” series at Division 9 gallery in Riverside. If getting past the day-old urin...

LifeHouse Theater in Redlands, known for their original versions of popular themed musicals, has taken a trip to Neverland with a perky reworked performance of Peter Pan, directed and choreographed by Dustin Ceithamer. Written ...

The Roger Miller musical Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is worth a visit no matter where or when it is being performed. Having enjoyed a somewhat recent revival in Los Angeles and Broadway, the title has bec...

Art galleries really exist for one reason alone: to showcase the work of emerging artists. If you want to see a master—say, Van Gogh or Pollack—go to an art museum. College-based art galleries always show off new wo...

A poetry venue can be about more than just poetry. Just ask LionLike MindState emcee David M. Oliver (aka Judah 1), a nationally known poet who says, “I wanted an open mic but I wanted it different. I wanted a…

In a small alcove of Pitzer College’s Lenzner Gallery, William Ransom’s carved-wood sugar droplets appear to pour out of the wall and ceiling. Shaped from scraps of fruit wood, these elongated forms suggest elastici...

Most people—at least most white people—probably first saw comedian Wanda Sykes in her brilliant turn as Jane Fonda’s personal assistant in the otherwise dreadful film Monster-in-Law. Everyone went to see the t...

Our country is freaking out. People are losing their homes, their jobs, and their hopes for the future. Some people think our new president won’t be able to help—either because they’re swallowing the “so...

Last week, I spent two days at a cabin in Big Bear. It was homey—it was a cabin, after all—and among the forgettable knickknacks of wooden blue jays, “poker room” gambling signs, and rudimentary woven ba...

Washing and drying, mending and sewing, restoring and refurbishing—this is the specialized paraphernalia of modern creative expression?
Call it the blurring of art and barter economy.
Your Donations Do Our W...

This weekend, Process & Faith (an organization within the Claremont School of Theology) presents the Whitehead International Film Festival—a collection of humanity-driven stories from around the world that all have at...

Just when you thought you were sick of guns—sick of people being shot with them, sick of the NRA making love to them and even sick of Liberals decrying their innate evil—along comes a show that does not make you&hel...

So . . . the election is over. And while there are still a few holdouts to change—those Waco-esque diehards who believe their country has been usurped by the over-educated (yes, this is considered a slam), the liberals an...